Politics – Alternative Aotearoa Seminar final report – the future starts here!

Source: MIL-OSI Submissions
Source: John Minto

Below is the final report of the Alternative Aotearoa Seminar held in Wellington on 25 July 2020

It is rich in policy proposals to avoid the country going back to “business as usual” and bringing all our pre-Covid problems with us.

The report has been sent to National and Labour but we have not had responses yet from Act, New Zealand First or the Green Party.
 
Report to Political Parties from Alternative Aotearoa Seminar

August 2020

On 25 July 2020 several hundred people attended a seminar at Pipitea Marae in Poneke/Wellington, and several thousand more joined the discussion online, in the wake of Covid-19 and the lead-up to the general election to imagine an Alternative Aotearoa to that which political parties are offering the nation.

The focus of the seminar was what would be needed for the social, environmental and economic transformation of Aotearoa to avoid the deeply embedded problems from the pre-pandemic era.

The seminar was co-chaired by two marvellous New Zealanders, Justice Advocate Julia Whaipooti and 2020 New Zealander of the Year and President of Equity New Zealand Jennifer Te Atamira Ward-Lealand.

The organisations represented at the seminar included: Greenpeace, Better Futures Forum, Pacific Climate Warriors, Forest and Bird, Child Poverty Action Group, State Housing Action Network, School Strike for Climate, Extinction Rebellion, Te Reo o Nga Tangata/The People Speak, Unite Union, Council of Trade Unions, Migrant Workers Association, Quality Public Education Coalition, Action Station, Generation Zero, 350 Aotearoa, Auckland Action Against Poverty, People Against Prisons Aotearoa and Te Ara Whatu.

(The agenda for the seminar along with video and transcripts of the presentations can be seen at https://chchpn.blogspot.com/) 

This short report cannot hope to capture the richness of that discussion from more than thirty contributors from our diverse communities, tangata whenua, Pasifika, migrant and Pākehā, young and old, unionists and academics, local government and community activists. However, it does capture the core themes and messages from the seminar and practical solutions to deep seated problems that confront our nation.

These are not new issues. But Covid-19 has brought them to the fore in ways that we can no longer ignore. We challenge your Party to commit to adopt these should you form part of a future government.
 
Vision, values and principles
We seek an Aotearoa where everyone can flourish. Surely no political party can reject that vision?
 
We seek an Aotearoa without racism and where te Tiriti o Waitangi and the principles of whanaungatanga, manākitanga, kotahitanga and aroha unite us. Again, surely no political party can reject that vision?

We seek communities that are empowered from their roots to draw on their strengths and build their own solutions, supported by local and central government, but not beholden to them.

We seek dignity, security and respect for migrants; secure livelihoods for those in paid work and for who don’t have that option, whether they are elderly, or survivors of abuse, or disabled by physical or mental health; a fundamental right to safe warm housing; and support that enables people to live the best lives possible.

We seek positive and aspirational goals that everyone, including the most vulnerable, can share in and achieve rather than a divisive and repressive agenda driven by fear which, through the use of state agencies of police, prisons, and immigration, perpetuates institutional racism.

We seek a tolerant process to navigate differences and embrace diverse cultural practices to seek consensus or at least accommodations based on mutual understandings.

Confronting racism
Aotearoa is a Tiriti-based nation. Tino rangatiratanga is an inalienable right under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is not a gift from Crown, it is an intrinsic right of hapū. As the COVID checkpoints showed, its exercise works to the benefit of all. Yet constitutional change has been resisted out of Pakeha fear and unwillingness to surrender privilege. Matike Mai Aotearoa, the report on constitutional transformation, provides a framework to deliver on the promises made in 1835 in He Whakaputanga o Nu Tireni and Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840. We need to let go that fear, empower tangata whenua, and embrace the Pacific and other diverse cultures that make up our 5 million.
 
The climate crisis, inequality, hate speech are not separate problems. The mosque killing was an act of hate. Diseases of colonisation and poverty kill people much more slowly. These are not separate issues.  Poverty has a colour problem – poverty is racism. Underlying the lovely notion of the ‘team of 5 million’ racism continued, towards the Chinese community, migrant workers, tangata whenua checkpoints. There is not a quick fix. Racist individuals do not exist as individuals in isolation. As a nation we need to move out of our siloed communities and develop a strategy to have conversations where we come to understand the realities of those who are disabled, addicts, abused, exploited.
 
Whakapapa is the connector between the living world, the natural world and the spiritual world. That web of relationships provides a blueprint for how to achieve change. Everyone in their difference has something to contribute. Silos are not enough. We are collectively interdependent. Everyone has a role in creating new futures.
 
Policy solutions

 
A responsive, empowering and accountable state
The state is not benign. It has responsibilities to uphold the democratic will of the people and those in positions of leadership must be accountable to this goal.
 
Lessons have been learned during the Covid-19 outbreak which provide a model for the longer term. We have learned what can be done when people work together and there is political leadership to facilitate this.
 
The state will remain dominant in our lives for a long time to come and working together to solve social, environmental and economic problems points the way to the future.
 
Almost forty years after the neoliberal coup, the government must address the causes of systemic and repeated market failures and reform public policy to prioritise the wellbeing of people, not capital. That requires fundamental redesign of laws on public finance and market-driven regulation to taxation and state owned infrastructure and services.
 
New Zealand is a land of plenty which can easily provide a decent standard of living for all its citizens. However our economic structures and taxation system has allowed a very small group to become fabulously wealthy at the expense of the rest of the community. Poverty and inequality dominate at the expense of dignity and self-respect.
 
Taking into account income tax and GST, people on low incomes pay a higher proportion of what they earn in tax than the wealthiest New Zealanders. Taxation is highest on wages and salaries while the super wealthy can easily avoid tax on their massive unearned incomes. Fundamental change is essential.
 
Our laws should be underpinned by our core values. Our economy must serve these fundamental values, not undermine them.  The economy must serve the common good.
 
A long list of reports have been commissioned to examine and address the nation’s social, environmental, and economic crises, including the Tax Working Group, the Welfare Export Advisory Group, Our Freshwater 2020, the Trade for All Advisory Group, among others. Yet most of their recommendations have been shelved in a pattern of inaction and neglect. We don’t need rhetoric and empty promises. We need action.
 
Policy solutions

• Implement the recommendations of the reports of the Tax Working Group, the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, Our Freshwater 2020, and the Trade for All Advisory Group
• Commit to a community-wide discussion of “tax fairness” which includes information on the regressive nature of GST and the progressive nature of death duties, financial transactions, capital gains (or net equity), redistributive income and wealth taxes
• Tax housing appropriately using the Risk-Free Rate Method that aggregates a person’s net equity in real estate and treats it as if it had earned interest at the bank
• Make available government credit for community-based co-operatives providing local services for local communities

 
Empowering youth
Young people are the future of Aotearoa. Yet they are a generation under immense pressure. A recent ActionStation survey identifies mental health, education, body image, discrimination and stress, related to insecurity and inequality, as among their most pressing problems. 
 
The privatised, fragmented and colonised system of education, including early childhood education, creates conditions for social harm. Diverse, bottom-up models of education that build human ability and maximise the potential of every person would unleash the human spirit in the country to envision and achieve a different future.
 
Young people need a sense of hope with real options for the future. That requires real commitments to address the crises of climate and racism. It requires safe community spaces. It means empowering young people with knowledge of their rights and ways to protect themselves against exploitation. Above all, they need to see themselves in the decision making processes that will shape their futures.
 
Policy solutions

• Establish a youth assembly (modelled on a citizens assembly) to recommend policy directions for young New Zealanders into the future
• Shift discussion from a “climate emergency” to a “policy-change emergency” to fight climate change rather than simply manage its negative impacts

 
An ecosystem that allows us to survive
A healthy ecosystem is the key to survival. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inter-dependence of humankind with all elements of the natural world. That knowledge is foundational to Māori and Pacific worldviews, but ignored in our extractive, growth-driven mode of capitalism. If we fail to heed the warning from COVID-19 pathogenic crises will become a systemic and catastrophic part of everyday life.
 
Everything flows from safe, healthy and sustainable communities and environment. Investing in safe, healthy and sustainable communities also pay social and economic dividends. That requires joined up thinking. Sustainable transport, energy, land and water cannot be relegated to remedial piecemeal efforts once the market has let rip. 
 
The climate crisis is not just happening offshore. The legacy of land confiscation and exploitation and rejection of tikanga and indigenous science are evident as storms and floods devastate local communities, and force tāngata whenua to relocate marae and urupā.
 
Aotearoa is a Pacific nation. That carries responsibilities for our collective survival. We must value the knowledge and wisdom of peoples who have nurtured this place for millennia and hear messages of young Pacific activists who are making sacrifices now to preserve our future.
 
Aotearoa is already approaching the point of no return. Today’s young people are inheriting multiple crises not of their making. The most existential is the survival of life on the planet itself. We need to recognise when we have ‘enough’. Those who bear responsibility for the climate emergency need to take responsibility to act now to avoid a lethal legacy to their children.
 
Policy solutions

• Set emission reduction targets that are consistent with keeping temperature increases to 1.5°C.
• Bring all agricultural emissions into the carbon trading scheme as a matter of urgency
• Phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and support farms to transition from industrial to regenerative farming 
• Phase out fossil fuel infrastructure and invest in clean, locally-owned and Māori-owned energy, as well as accessible public/active/electric transport and warmer housing
• Phase out all single use plastics and invest in a circular economy, including systems for refillable and reusable packaging
• Establish a national and regional assemblies based on participatory democracy to based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and include all aspects of the constitutional rights of tāngata whenua
• Invest in rail for mass transportation of goods and people
• End subsidies for trucks on roads with big increases in road user charges for heavy vehicles (one single eight-tonne axle does the same road damage as 10,000 cars)
• Make public transport free across the country by prioritising public transport funding in the NZTA budget rather than new roads
• Place cameras on all New Zealand’s 1100 commercial fishing boats and implement a zero ‘by-catch’ target
• Insist that Fisheries New Zealand act on illegal fishing practices to stop rampant seabird and marine mammal by-catch
• Lobby the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to remove exemptions on fossil fuel use from aviation and shipping, and encourage other nations to do likewise

MIL OSI